


Shepherd Your Flock

by Gray Shadows (the_afterlight)



Category: Exiles - Melanie Rawn
Genre: Gen, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_afterlight/pseuds/Gray%20Shadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cailet Rille enjoys her visits with Rinnel Solingirt, not least for the stories he tells, but she'd never expected any of the saints' lives to be this <em>boring</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shepherd Your Flock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/gifts).



"You don't often hear about Bleisios the Curly," Rinnel said, settling down at his little table with mortar and pestle. Irien had sent Cailet out for one of Rinnel's snakebite remedies, but Rinnel had none prepared and so had invited Cailet to sit and listen as he mixed. Adding a pinch of this herb, a few leaves of that, he worked them together to a steady rhythm, forming an underlying counterbeat to his story. "He's one of the older saints, his patronage assumed by St. Chevasto. But he lived an interesting life! For a short while, at least. Had a few adventures when he was young, Bleisios did."

Cailet found herself reaching out for something to do with her hands as she listened. Rinnel, without looking or stopping his story, handed her a knife and a couple of shriveled roots, which she set to chopping as best she could.

"Bleisios was the youngest child of an advocate in Cantrashir, and quite a successful one, at that. She had three daughters and three sons before him. The daughters were following in their mother's footsteps, with one, as this story happens, an advocate already, and the other two hard at work at their studies. Bleisios' brothers were each successful in their own way. One had married a councillor, one was engaged to a mayor, and the third had earned some notoriety as a talented tenor. As he reached his thirteenth birthday, Bleisios' mother came to him. 'What would you like to be?' she asked him. 'Your sisters are to be advocates, your brothers are fathers, or soon to be. Kellan is to perform at Ryka. What dreams do you have?'

"Bleisios thought about this, ignoring the cake in front of him as he pondered. 'I think, Mother,' he said at last, 'that I would like to herd sheep.'"

Cailet giggled. "Sheep?" she asked. "Who wants to herd sheep?"

Shrugging, Rinnel grinned and set aside the mortar. "Shepherds, I imagine. And Bleisios, who aspired to be one." He turned away to set the kettle over the fire, giving the coals a few pokes to bring them back to life. "As I'm sure you can imagine, his mother wasn't fond of this dream. 'I'm going to send you to your eldest brother!' she declared. 'Surely when you see his children, you will understand the joy of being a loving, caring father. You'll see that this is a proper path for a man of your standing to follow.' And so Bleisios was sent to live with his brother, where he ignored his niece and his nephew and instead made friends with the stableboy, who though he loved horses first and best had been raised by a shepherd in the nearby hills. 

"'Enough!' cried Bleisios' mother, after she came to visit. 'I'll send you to your next brother, where you can learn the joys of being a loving husband! You'll understand what it means to be dutiful to a woman.' And so Bleisios moved to live with his brother, and spent time with his brother's fiancée, and though, while he shared his brother's roof, he heard many sounds in the night that he had no desire to hear, he did not feel as if he learned anything that made him want to be a husband himself. You can stop, Cailet; I do not believe the roots will attempt to fight back any more." He reached out and plucked the knife from her hand, sweeping the rather poorly massacred roots - Cailet could manage many things adeptly, but her roots usually ended up looking more chewed than sliced - into a bowl and setting them aside. "When his mother came to visit, she asked, 'And do you wish to be a loving husband?' and Bleisios could only reply, 'Well, it seems to be good fun and all - at least, his fiancée seems to enjoy it - but what am I to do during the day?' Outraged, his mother proclaimed, 'If that is all you care about, I will send you to your third brother! He can teach you how to properly entertain a woman, as surely he sees enough of them!' Which was, I'll tell you, rather short-sighted of Bleisios' mother: his third brother, for all that he was a very popular tenor, was entertaining absolutely no _women_ at all. 

"'Bleisios,' said his brother the tenor, 'if you want to herd sheep, then herd sheep. Just promise me that you'll be the absolute best shepherd there has ever been; if you are, I think even our mother will be happy.' And so, with a pocketful of coin from his brother, Bleisios went off into the hills and apprenticed himself to a shepherd." Rinnel turned, just as the kettle began to boil, and grabbed it from the fire. He poured hot water over the roots in the bowl, releasing fragrant steam, a little spicy, into the air. "There are many versions of his life as an apprentice; ask any three scholars and receive five different tales. I prefer to ignore them all; it's what matters after he left his apprenticeship that matters. As you may know, Bleisios was the patron of wool-combers; it's a patronage neither powerful nor glamorous, but it has its place. The _reason_ Bleisios governs wool-combing, as opposed to any of the other shepherding patronages, is simple.

"One morning, in… oh, the late spring, as I recall the story, Bleisios came out to see a stranger among his flock. 'You there!' he called out, trying to grab their attention. 'What are you doing with my sheep?' 

"The stranger looked up and laughed. 'Your sheep?' he called back. 'Scurvy little things like these? Look at their wool, all tangled! The state they're in, I thought these sheep were roaming free.'

"Bleisios blustered, but it was true: for all that he loved being a shepherd, he'd let his sheep go too long unsheared. Their wool was so dirty that, looking at it, he worried he might not be able to salvage it for sale, and he only had until the next day to comb it for spinning." Dipping a finger into the bowl of soaking roots, Rinnel sucked off the liquid and then shook his finger clean; he poured the contents of the bowl into the mortar. "So Bleisios sat down and called each sheep to him in turn, and though he had neglected their wool, he was so kind to them that they each stood perfectly still for his shears. It took him all day and all night, but in the end, his sheep were sheared and he had a pile of wool all ready to be combed.

"But he hadn't slept, and it was market day, and none of his wool was ready. Nonetheless, Bleisios grabbed his combs and piled the wool into his tiny cart, and with his nag horse following the road on her own he combed, and combed, as the cart bumped and bustled towards the nearest town." Cailet leaned up a bit to look into the mortar as Rinnel started pounding it again; the roots and the herbs had soaked up most of the liquid, so it was more of a paste than anything else. "Bleisios was so intent on combing the wool that he didn't notice his approach to the town. It was only when his horse stopped, right in the middle of market square, that Bleisios looked up. Looking down again, Bleisios stared in wonder at a perfectly-combed pile of wool fibres, a job that should have taken him much longer to accomplish than the short ride into town. 'Look at this!' 

"'We see it, Bleisios!' said the townspeople, as they came up to look at his wares. 'Such wonderful wool this shearing. What have you been feeding those sheep of yours, hmm?' And though Bleisios wondered if it had been, perhaps, that mysterious stranger who had helped him out, he just smiled and shrugged and said:

"'Oh, you know. I guess I just have a knack for combing the wool, s'all.'

"The story of Bleisios' amazing wool spread town to town, and demand grew higher and higher - especially as each shearing came out better than the last. And so Bleisios' name was cemented as first among wool-combers… and, eventually, among the saints of the calendar. At least until the calendar was revised."

Cailet nodded slowly. "That's… boring, honestly. I thought the saints all lived exciting lives?"

Rinnel shrugged as he scooped the herb-and-root paste into a small pot, corking it and sealing it with wax from his candle. "Then why do you think I told you Bleisios' story?" he asked her.

"Because…" Cailet frowned. "... I don't know. I mean, it's boring, like I said. It's-" She stopped. " _Because_ it's boring? He just wanted to herd sheep, and then he somehow ends up a saint. He probably didn't even - did that story with the stranger even actually happen? All the wool he combed on the trip into town?"

"Hmm. It's possible." Rinnel tied some string around the jar and passed it to Cailet, who looped the string around her wrist for safe-keeping. "Which means…?"

Cailet's frown deepened as she thought about it. "If it didn't happen that way, then... stories grow, right? Like, if I told Alin a story, and he told First Daughter, she told someone, who told someone else, and it turned into this whole big thing that wasn't what I said at all. So maybe Bleisios was, I don't know. Was he just a normal man, and people made his story bigger?" She gaped as another thought occurred to her. "And then maybe that happened with other saints, too? Were they all just regular people?"

"I believe that some of the stories are true," Rinnel explained, "or at least true in part. Certainly I expect some of the saints were mage gifted, and so their 'miracles' were the much ordinary work of Mage Guardians and the like. Some of the saints may have performed true miracles after all. It's hard for us to say now; the stories are all we have left. And that, Cailet, is today's lesson: never underestimate the power of a good story. Told right, a story can lift a person up to sainthood, or tear them to pieces and leave them in the dust. You'd do well to remember that, and be careful with your words.

"Now, Irien will be wanting that salve, so you'd best be heading along home now. I'll see you in three days, and you can do some more work on that wall."


End file.
